Tipping Point
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blissblogger
Well-known member
brock-blocking beats
if we are talking about the enshitenment of something that you loved and was as essential and vital to you as air or water....
the one tipping-into-shit moment i can precisely pinpoint (cos i wrote about it at the end of the year on my website) is the death - living death, rigor mortis but still in ghastly motion - of drum + bass
i was at a jungle event in New York, a V Records party, spring of 1998... i'd been gloomy for a while, but this was it, the pits.
i think it was a bunch of visiting Brit luminaries on the decks, so we were getting bang up to date stuff, plate after plate, and it was all such desperate stuff
DJ Trace was deejaying - and "Bambaataa", one of the few contenders for a Tune during that dismal era, came on for the fourth time that night and i found myself MCing - not on stage i hasten to add! - in the midst of the crowd, inaudible to everyone i'm sure, or at least i hope - MC-ing over the stiff as a stillborn kitten beat:
"Stagnant music! Stagnant music! Acrid Bassline, another Acrid Bassline!"
I did actually feel close to tears.
But - if you look at the comments under this tune on YouTube - for some people it's an Anthem, a transformative transfigurative experience
e.g. "The first time I became possessed on the dancefloor was because of this tune...I nearly died."
I nearly died of boredom and brock-blocked frustration.
Mind you, i actually know someone, a good friend who finally (despite years of me giving her tapes in hopes of converting) finally got into D&B in 1998 and became an absolute fanatic for it
luckily 2step was taking off so i had an alternative source of air and water
if we are talking about the enshitenment of something that you loved and was as essential and vital to you as air or water....
the one tipping-into-shit moment i can precisely pinpoint (cos i wrote about it at the end of the year on my website) is the death - living death, rigor mortis but still in ghastly motion - of drum + bass
i was at a jungle event in New York, a V Records party, spring of 1998... i'd been gloomy for a while, but this was it, the pits.
i think it was a bunch of visiting Brit luminaries on the decks, so we were getting bang up to date stuff, plate after plate, and it was all such desperate stuff
DJ Trace was deejaying - and "Bambaataa", one of the few contenders for a Tune during that dismal era, came on for the fourth time that night and i found myself MCing - not on stage i hasten to add! - in the midst of the crowd, inaudible to everyone i'm sure, or at least i hope - MC-ing over the stiff as a stillborn kitten beat:
"Stagnant music! Stagnant music! Acrid Bassline, another Acrid Bassline!"
I did actually feel close to tears.
But - if you look at the comments under this tune on YouTube - for some people it's an Anthem, a transformative transfigurative experience
e.g. "The first time I became possessed on the dancefloor was because of this tune...I nearly died."
I nearly died of boredom and brock-blocked frustration.
Mind you, i actually know someone, a good friend who finally (despite years of me giving her tapes in hopes of converting) finally got into D&B in 1998 and became an absolute fanatic for it
luckily 2step was taking off so i had an alternative source of air and water
version
Well-known member
Yeah, I'm talking moments when you either knew something was done because it had gone to shit or because something new had just left it in the dust. Gamechangers for good or ill.
tbf I think I look at 2step with more revisionist elysian fields garden of eden vibes because it was the music of my childhood. but if I was 20 in 1999 I might have found the whole culture and the music rotten, perhaps. It's really hard to know as I probably would have had different influences to what I have now.
like, i obviously don't agree with junglist sceptics, i really like garage (even in its housier variety) but like i can kind of see their point. from the whole ecosystem churning out roots n future bomb after roots n future bomb to something fairly safe and poppy with a few innovations (dem 2, garage rap) etc etc, it was a regression in its own kind of way.
where would i have gone hypothetically? definitely not techno as that scene had succumbed to the same syndrome as jungle, just jeff mills clone after jeff mills clone. European deep house (not to be confused with the rhythmic jacking chi town stuff) is too uneventful for me to be a dedicated believer. I actually think I'd be a digger of 80s electro and 60s-70s concrete/electronic etc etc like I am now, only except with records and not digitally.
which then brings me onto my next question, does the way we consume culture today inevitably mean we all reach a critical mass tipping point where retromania is unavoidable?
like, i obviously don't agree with junglist sceptics, i really like garage (even in its housier variety) but like i can kind of see their point. from the whole ecosystem churning out roots n future bomb after roots n future bomb to something fairly safe and poppy with a few innovations (dem 2, garage rap) etc etc, it was a regression in its own kind of way.
where would i have gone hypothetically? definitely not techno as that scene had succumbed to the same syndrome as jungle, just jeff mills clone after jeff mills clone. European deep house (not to be confused with the rhythmic jacking chi town stuff) is too uneventful for me to be a dedicated believer. I actually think I'd be a digger of 80s electro and 60s-70s concrete/electronic etc etc like I am now, only except with records and not digitally.
which then brings me onto my next question, does the way we consume culture today inevitably mean we all reach a critical mass tipping point where retromania is unavoidable?
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version
Well-known member
I sometimes wonder whether the rate at which stuff turns over might eventually make even nostalgia impossible.
It just confused me. I didn't know whether I liked it or not. It's the depth of the cultural references (I'd hardly heard any Southern stuff then), the politics, and the way the production was so off the hook, and so rich - Clinton, the horns, the gospel.. The emotional tone as well I think - it's pretty different than yr bog standard rap machismo.
Coming into such a complete vision of which I'd been totally unaware. They'd been really developing and this was pretty much full flowering and was hard to take on.
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blissblogger
Well-known member
crikey yes that was terrible.
and Krust been doing interesting, abstracty-electronic stuff like "Soul in Motion' that was a bit dry and frigid but at least sonically strange.
i found UKG as a culture offputting, not being good with clothes and having a bit of that Socialist-Methodist streak of finding flashing the cash suspect and unseemly.
but the music was great, even more so when it became 2step - and the conquering the pop charts was a wonderful development; i loved the way it could be both dominating the pirates AND running things in the Top 20 simultaneously
very much like hardcore pt 2 - that blend of ruff + cheesy, bass-heavy + toppy-melodic, underground + overground, bliss + dark, technical beat-intricacies + anthemic hooks
the tipping point for me with UKG was a pirate tape a journalist friend sent me from London in the late summer of 1998, which had Groove Chronicles 'Stone Cold' on it. up to then i'd liked speed garage tunes a lot but had some reservations, feeling that it was a backward step from jungle/techstep, a retreat into pleasantness - but then hearing the MC interacting with this track, and the amazing shift from slinky sexy noir Aaliyah-sampling into the doomy bassline, it all clicked - yes, this is the next crucial phase of what i'd been following - and all the more so because it's confounding for a lot of drumbassheadz.
The NYC jungle scene bods reacted to speed garage like it was apostasy, treason. But if keeping the faith meant listening to "Bambaataa" and "Warhead"....
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
Yeah, boredom & emptiness.
luka
Well-known member
Along with night slugs etc represented the capture of dance music by the middle class. Gentrification.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
That big G.
Root of all evil.
Root of all evil.
Sure sure. I agree with all of this. however I think what I was trying to get at is that UKG was more a codified ruff+cheesy. hardcore's cheese was manic, a frankenstein's monster out of control. It wasn't really cheese in the bubblegum or destiny's child sense. it had some vague cocaine jitters but no real psychosis to it. it's like the scene had collectively decided to isolate the skizos (depending on how many z's you want to put there.) That's why my theory is that if you walk through london in the summer you'll still here garage pumping out of windows and cars, but never hardcore or jungle, maybe some skibbidy diddydum dnb.
It's like rare groove, I really like it and try and collect as much as possible, but but could i be going to rare groove nights every weekend? don't think so. every garage night i've gone to has had just that little bit missing (the tunes have been fantastic, there hasn't been that show yer cash off stuff) but as soon as I bump into a twat who starts being obnoxious to me i actually perversely get the same feel i would at fabric dnb night, why the hell am I even here? i could listen to all these tunes at home, and often have.
however there is a propulsion in hardcore-jungle where you really do need to be there to feel breakbeats and bass. You can't replicate it at home unless you have a Funktion One. You at least have to hear bizzy b over a club pa to feel the genuinely warzone only the freaks must apply nature of it.
I'd say breaks did that first.